Bonfire night - rocket sticks...

[Chubber]

As you walk Fido in the morning, keep an eye open for rocket sticks.....allowed to dry they make great reinforcing for internal card wall structures etc.....

 

Doug

[steve1]

Very handy for all sorts of modelling uses.

 

steve

[cypherman]

They also make good wood loads for wagons

[Ramblin Rich]

I get the feeling there's less rockets these days, it's usually mortar types which shoot an unpowered charge upwards, rather than a rocket propellent. It's probably safer in that there's less empty casings coming back down.

[RJS1977]

Michael Bentine used to make his own fireworks for Bonfire Night, with the result that his neighbours soon took to going away for a week in early November for their own safety!

 

One of his inventions was a 'two stage' firework rocket. The idea was that two rockets would be strapped together in such a way that the explosion of the first stage would ignite the second, which would go up to an even greater height. Unfortunately Michael had forgotten that firework rockets turn upside down before they explode, so the second stage was fired downwards, landing and exploding in the thatched roof of the cottage next door!

 

Michael rang the fire brigade up and was told "Don't worry, we know the address, We've been there before!"

[Oldddudders]

I once went to a neighbour’s firework party, and they had invested in some serious fireworks. But they seemed clueless about certain basics. As a child, I learnt that the cheap rockets dad bought should be launched from a milk bottle or similar, leaving the rocket free to go. These people seemed to bury the rocket shaft in deep earth, which guaranteed take-off did not happen. Instead the “pretty” phase of the rocket took place at ground level, and the bang nearly cracked the windows of their barn conversion. This happened several times......

[TheSignalEngineer]

The CO of our Army Cadet unit decided to outdo the neighbours once and for all by letting off a thunderflash in the back garden. It blew out several windows.

[Edge]

Went to a very amateurish pub fireworks display one night, was perfectly fine until the Catherine wheel set fire to the fence panel it had been nailed to and the bottle with the rocket in it fell over and fired in to the audience.

 

Thankfully nobody was hurt, (and being about seven at the time I thought this was all fantastically exciting) but we never went back for some reason

[The Johnster]

Back to rocket sticks on model railways, I picked a couple up after last year's Guy Fawkes', and will be on the lookout for more this year.  You can, of course, just pick up a couple of lengths at your nearest DIY megastore, but there's something very satisfying about picking up something in the street and recycling it in this way.  I have used mine as wagon loads for a bogie bolster, but they are very likely at the moment to be given the opportunity of exciting new careers as seats in Triang clerestories for my miner's workman's; they are just about right for this with a corner smoothed off a little and my local model shop is out of Ratio seating as used in the 4 wheelers.  They are not perfect, of course, but it's dark in there and they will 'do'.

 

Another underrated but similar resource is wooden coffee stirrers, available from the likes of motorway services and Sainsbury's cafes.  These are obvious plank loads for opens from the sawmill down the branch, and I have used them cut in half lengthways to make footboards for my ersatz Dean bogies for the above clerestories (the original B1s with footboards glued on), but they keep having other uses, such as being cut with pointy ends to clear crud from flangeways, paint stirrer/mixers, and general prodders and positioners for small bits and pieces.  And, again, the price is right, and you sometimes get a cup of coffee and a choc chip cookie as well!

 

Wood is one of those things that, because of the fibrous way it is made up, scales down to any size and still perfectly represents itself, and if you leave it out in the garden for a few weeks it weathers perfectly as well, to a much better green/grey than you can achieve by painting it.  Good stuff; trees have been using it for years...

Edited November 4, 2018 by The Johnster

[Dave John]

/rant mode on.

 

Sorry to be negative, but I wish they would ban firework sales to the general public. Just have public displays in specific places at specific times. Why ? The Caledonian pup hates them, they reduce her to a shivering wreck, and I guess I have spent 15 hours in the last 3 days trying to comfort her and calm her down. Really who the hell sets off fireworks at 3 am in an urban environment ? 

 

I expect I sound like an old fogey. Not surprising, I am an old fogey. When I was a kid it was just bonfire night, a few fireworks and that was it. Now its a month of sounding like we are in a war zone for heavens sake. Never mind what it does to pets , has anyone considered the effect on wildlife ? 

 

Sorry, I know it a railway modelling forum and I'm probably straying way off topic. TBH, I'd be quite happy to buy a ton of sticks and mail them out free to modellers if I thought it would give the pup a bit of peace. 

 

/rant mode off 

[RedgateModels]

When I was a kid it was the absolute best 6th November if you found a spent rocket sticking out of the lawn in the morning. Odd how simple things used to excite back then .....

[The Johnster]

As schoolkids, we'd compare sticks in the playground; Freud would have had something to say about this!

[dunnyrail]

I get the feeling there's less rockets these days, it's usually mortar types which shoot an unpowered charge upwards, rather than a rocket propellent. It's probably safer in that there's less empty casings coming back down.

Fully agree, this year has been my poorest haul ever, only two. What will we do now for our small square bits if wood?

[Hump Shunter]

4p each?

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wooden-Square-Section-Candy-Sticks/dp/B005MGRM94

[Ray Von]

Agree totally with Johnster, coffee stirrers also reinforce almost every building I make! Got some great skinny straws / drink stirrers off the bar in a nearby pub - made excellent "steel pipe" painted and cut up into sections :-) trendy black paper napkins also make a good (and free) papier mache that doesn't need painting a dark colour to conceal under coal-heaps or ballast etc.